No No, You can not focus and multi task, that is the problem, to focus you need to have no other rubish in your head. pure concentration, nothing less

nonsense, Simone Young recorded some fine Bruckner not long ago.

I recognize that I'm straying a little bit from the topic matter, but I found this quote interesting:I agree that you can't focus at PEAK efficiency while performing some other task. That, however, doesn't completely preclude focusing ability... particularly when some of the "sub-routines" are relatively autonomic.

There's a phenomenon I like to call "split-focus." I have some limited ability in that regard- e.g.: sometimes, I can listen to two people talking to me at the same time, and be able to absorb, verbatim, what both parties are saying. There are far more transcendent examples of this... they say that Julius Caesar was able to dictate to 7 scribes 7 different sets of instructions to various provinces contemporaneously... and Caesar would bounce from scribe to scribe, remembering the particulars of where he left off, almost never losing his place.

To focus your mind means to apply all of your thought and concentration to the subject in hand be it Music, driving, sport etc to the extent of obliterating all other conscious thought. This is not easy to do for the average person. However well you think you can cope with two separate and different thought processes is subjective, and better results would be achieved with pure focus.
In practice the ability to focus, plus, ability in the task at hand makes the difference between an average result and an excellent result.
Male and Female brains are different in this respect [at least in the articles that I have read] most men just can not do two things at the same time, if they try it’s a hundred to one that they will make a mess of one of them, they eventually learn to accept this . Woman on the other hand are experts at this but find it much harder and sometimes impossible to FOCUS.
I apologise if I offend any one.

Hi Andante,
I have to disagree" applying all of your thought" to music is a split -focus activity. Concentrating on one thing would make the performance of music impossible because music is a complex activity. Some activities such as playing the organ obviously involve "split-focus" and others like playing a single line instument while, not being as obviously complex, in reality are highly complex and do not involve 'pure focus". Accompanists must pay attention to their own playing (right hand, left hand, foot for pedaling, page turns, the soloist's phrasing, dynamics, etc)
Playing music is mult-tasking and multi-focusing along with blocking out" interference" both external and internal.
I am not offended by your gender generalizations, but I do feel that this way of thinking is a short cut to good judgement and does not provide as accurate a picture of the world as viewing individuals a person at a time.
That being said... I am now going to make a silly generalization- I have found that male musicians generally are less stereotypically masculine and female musicians are less stereotypically feminine. But maybe it is really the case for all people and I hold this view simply because I am in contact with musicians more than other professions.

LFcatface,

To focus means to focus on the task in hand, and in this case we mean music and in particular conducting, so you do not want to have in your mind things such as: last nights party, is the car really that bad, did the fool really mean what he said etc etc. this is what I was getting at.
You say “a single line instrument” I am not clear what you mean??
I used to play Bass also Flute at no time was I thinking left hand right hand, it just becomes automatic, I would assume that a keyboard player would be the same (once they are proficient).
To use another example, take a formula one driver, the focus must be entirely on driving, no extraneous thoughts or the result is a poor performance or a big bang.
Just a word on your comments re generalisation not being good judgment compared to individual assessment, surly both are valid.
Going back to the question of this thread the term men also women was used which itself is a generalisation how else can it be answered other than by generalisation?
So I stand by my suggestion that generally men can focus more easily than woman and that relates to better results, and yes, there are exceptions to every rule.

Hi Andante,

What I mean by a single line instrument is an instrument that plays one note at a time like flute or voice , a bass is not strictly a single line instrument since it is capable of playing more than one note at a time.

Two hands and a mouth coordinating together to play a single note on a flute is not as complex a task as playing a polyphonic piece on the organ with two hand and feet working together. Accompanying/ or coaching an opera singer while evaluating his/ her musicial precision , diction , technique and acting while playing from an orchestral score and singing the other parts requires attention on many, many things at one time.

An opera singing executing complex staging while singing a patter song in a foreign language, and watching a conductor in the pit from some angles and watching a conductor in a monitor at other angles requires a divided focus. You can't forget your words and you can't step on the feet of the other performers. You can't go on automatic either or you will not be expressive in your acting or able to respond to spontaneous changes from the conductor.

There are many real world musical skills that simply do require musical multi-tasking. One of them is conducting. Making sure that the basson soloist gets a little cue a second before the chorus gets a big cue , while keeping the beat going and the strings phrasing together might just require the same kind concentration it took for a cave woman to build the fire and keep it going, while making sure that Cave Man Jr doesn't fall off a cliff and baby cave girl doesn't wander off and get eaten by a tiger.

Can't you even consider the idea that the kind of concentration that in which women (generally) might excell might actually be useful to a Maestra?

I agree with you regarding the complexity of a keyboard instrument but a wind or string player has other problems to contend with, but that is diverging from this thread.
We seem to be at odds with the meaning of focus and multi tasking and I have explained this in my last post so will not repeat myself.
Re your last paragraph. Using my meaning of “to focus” the answer to your question is No.

As I am a professional musician and singing teacher and have only done several papers on the psychology of performance, mostly dealing with concentration as it concerns performance anxiety and not gender, I therefore decided to consult with several singing students of mine one former and one current, who both happen to be psychiatrists.
Both indicated that they would consider having such things enter your mind as " last nights party, is the car really that bad, did the fool really mean what he said etc etc. " during the playing of music would indicate the person with such interfering thought MIGHT have attention deficit/hyperactive disorder.
I looked up this discorder and I learned that:
"ADHD is much more common in males than in females. There are studies which report that males with ADHD outnumber females by at least 4 to1".

In my own experience I have not noticed a difference between the ability of males and females to be able to concentrate. But everywhere I looked the data came back as concentration problems are much more common males.


My conclusion is that a female brain is not a barrier to being a conductor but how males, especially of the older generation perceive female brains, might be a problem.

Wow, I will have to have a rest and give my overworked Brain a bit of a rest, being so old is not all fun and ............. damn where was I??
I have to get my PC memory upgraded RAM and a HD up grade, might just call in at the shrink while I am at it. lol

LF catface

I just had to make this post in case my PC is out of action tomorrow.
ADHD is a neurological disorder and I would have thought anyone suffering from this would be unlikely to have the concentration to study music to a proficient degree. The fact that it occurs in male more than females means what?
So you do not agree with my suggestion, fine, what is your explanation as to why males out perform females in conducting and most other things.

By the way, it is well known than Alzheimer's Disease affects more women than men. And then? What consequences? lol .

You most recently wrote
##ADHD is a neurological disorder and I would have thought anyone suffering from this would be unlikely to have the concentration to study music to a proficient degree. The fact that it occurs in male more than females means what?##

On Dec 3rd you wrote
To focus means to focus on the task in hand, and in this case we mean music and in particular conducting, so you do not want to have in your mind things such as: last nights party, is the car really that bad, did the fool really mean what he said etc etc. this is what I was getting at

All I said was that when I asked the two people I know who know thae most about the brain about your examples of lack of focus "to have in your mind things such as: last nights party, is the car really that bad, did the fool really mean what he said etc etc. this is what I was getting at" were examples of what they would describe as what might be more likely to happen in a female brain. They BOTH independantly said if someone were to have in their mind " things such as: last nights party, is the car really that bad, did the fool really mean what he said etc etc. " it would suggest ADHD which is more prevalent in men.

I agree with you that someone with ADHD "would be unlikely to have the concentration to study music to a proficient degree" especially if we are defining music as western art music and not pop and rock music. I know musicians in the commercial music field who seem to both have attention problems and good careers.

You wrote
"So you do not agree with my suggestion, fine, what is your explanation as to why males out perform females in conducting and most other things. "

I would prefer to stay on topic with the conductors , because I think enough has been writtten about "other things".
I would like to offer my personal observations

1) I have noticed that given two music students of equal skill , males are more likely to have the confidence to stand before a group of musicians and lead.
2) I have seen players openly question and refuse to cooperate in a professional way with female conductors on several occasions. In both circumstances the uncooperative player was male and older than the conductor. Both situations were stressful dress rehearsals and in my opinion both times the conductors should have received cooperation and not been questioned because they were using normal methods and making normal requests.
3) I have heard many people say that they simply don't like the way it looks or that women simply should not be conductors , it seems to me to be the same kind of resistance that some people have to female Rabbi's and Ministers.

I think that some of the most exciting and talented conductors of the new generation are women and I look forward to the day when their ability will define the limits of their achievements and not stereotypes about their gender.

This discussion reminds me of something similar Carl Sagan discussed and I have to interject it here...

From The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, pg. 381-382:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some stereotyping is the result of not controlling the variables, of forgetting what other factors might be in play. For example, it used to be that there were no women in science. Many male scientists were vehement: This proved that women lacked the ability to do science. Temperamentally, it didn't fit them, it was too difficult, it required a kind of intelligence that women don't have, they're too emotional to be objective, can you think of any great women theoretical physicists? ...and so on. Since then the barriers have come tumbling down. Today women populate most of the subdisciplines of science. In my own fields of astronomy, and planetary studies, women have recently burst on the scene, making discovery after discovery, and providing a desperately needed breath of fresh air.

So what data were they missing-- all those famous male scientists of the 1950's and 60's and earlier who had pronounced so authoritatively on the intellectual deficiencies of women? Plainly, the society was preventing women from entering science, and then criticizing them for it, confusing cause and effect:

You want to be an astronomer, young woman? Sorry.

Why can't you? Because you're unsuited.

How do we know you're unsuited? Because women have never been astronomers.

Put so baldly, the case sounds absurd. But the contrivances of bias can be subtle. The... group is rejected by spurious arguments, sometimes done with such confidence... that many of us... fail to recognize it as self-serving slight of hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other words, the reason why in the past there have been so few female conductors or composers (or have not gained recognition as such) is because of a pre-existing bias. Not unlike the idea that "Negroes" were subhuman and lacked intelligence, but the reason why is they were barred from having any education. If you don't give people a chance, the bias "confirms" the prejudice.

Anyway, over the years I have worked under male and female conductors, worked with male and female musicians, worked alongside male and female composers and I have yet to detect any difference of quality along lines of gender (or sexual orientation). Getting bogged down in semantics of "multi-tasking" or "focussing" is only muddying the waters needlessly.

I would think in the year 2007 this would be such a dead issue.

"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

~ josh

__________________
"There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.” ~ Claude Debussy

LF catface
I do agree with your comments 1.2.3.
I have just attended a concert with a woman conductor and quite honestly was not impressed despite her getting good write ups in the press.
She did not have control over the orch but made a great display of jumping up and down on the rostrum arms flaying uncontrolledably. At the end she thanked each section and just about each individual player it was really overdone and it seemed that the players were slightly embarrassed by this. The hard work should have been done at rehearsal but obviously something was lacking and amiss, I realise that this can happen to male conductors and mention it because it seemed relevant to your point #2. I will not identify her on this forum but have sent you a PM with her name etc

fool on the hill you say:
If you don't give people a chance, the bias "confirms" the prejudice.
Are you implying that women have been put off conducting because of a male bias? also in life you make your own chances and if you are good enough you will be noticed.

You also say “Getting bogged down in semantics of "multi-tasking" or "focussing" is only muddying the waters needlessly” I do not accept this, it is my deliberately provocative way of answering the original question and I believe it is at the very least part of the answer, I accept your political correctness how ever the fact remains that Men and Women are different, we think, react and perform differently.